By now you have likely seen Bitstrips (graphics used to turn yourself and your friends into cartoon characters) on your Facebook newsfeed. Beyond the popular use on social media sites, Bitstrips can be a fun way to create characters for your eLearning lessons across a wide range of ages and nationalities. You could even make characters that resemble people in your office!
When navigating to http://bitstrips.com/ it may look like you'll need to create a Facebook account (or use one you already have); but if you use this alternate link, you can create Bitstrips online without involving your Facebook account: https://bitstrips.com/pageone/.
From there you can begin creating characters by selecting Create > Character.
Bitstrips will walk you through the process of creating your avatar. When you're finished, your character can be accessed by clicking My Stuff > Characters. Of course, if you want to use generic characters, you can do that too. Bitstrips comes pre-loaded with some business, casual, and medical field characters so that you won't have to create on your own. There are also characters for famous officials (like the President) and some animals.
The best part about the characters is that all of them can be fully customized to represent a wide range of emotions and physical activities.
To use the characters outside of Bitstrips, insert them into a comic, save the comic, and right-click to save it as a picture. The saved comic is editable like any other image. The limitation here is that you won't be able to enlarge the character much before they'll pixilate. Additionally, the characters (and other assets you can use through Bitstrips) won't save as independent, transparent background images. For this reason I find that if I'm going to use the individual elements, the most successful treatment is to insert a white freeform shape behind the characters and elements so they look like they've been cut out and pasted in like in the example below. (I've created a classroom background in PowerPoint and inserted the character and the desks from Bitstrips.)
Because extracting individual elements can get a bit clunky (and maybe you're not a fan of that cut and pasted look?), a better option might be to create your entire scene within Bitstrips and to save that instead. To do this, Create a Comic, select a Layout, and then choose Art Library > Scenes to access the varied scenes. Drag your desired Scene to the comic. From there you can layer in the elements and characters of your choosing.
What about copyright and usage restrictions? I reached out to Bitstrips about how these images can be used and if manipulating them is okay. According to Shahan Panth of Bitstrips, "You can export Bitstrips characters for use in PowerPoint (and the like) just by saving a comic that features your character to your hard drive. First save the comic you've created on Bitstrips.com. Then right-click the image and save it to your Downloads folder. You can then manipulate the image just as you would any other image file."
Panth also said "You can use any comics or characters you create for personal use as you see fit, but we look at instances of commercial use on a case by case basis."
If you're not sure if your specific case is a usage violation, my best advice is to send Bitstrips an email at support@bitstrips.com and ask directly.
In related news, if Bitstrips are taking over your Facebook feed (and you're not happy about it), here's how to scrub the offending comics from your newsfeed (without blocking your well-intentioned friends): How to Block Bitstrips From Your Facebook Timeline.